Unendlicher Spaß (Infinite Jest)

Jury Statement

In 1996, David Foster Wallace published his post-modern, 1,500-pages-long novel “Infinite Jest”, which was released in a German version in 2009. Director Thorsten Lensing and his team abridged the material until it became a four-hour theatre event. Their stage version, which took several years to create, focusses on the protagonists and their relationships with each other. The outstanding company of actors develop their characters from their foibles and flaws and pay no attention to distinct gender assignments. Much rather, Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung, Ursina Lardi, Heiko Pinkowski and Devid Striesow play on a nearly empty stage with each other and with the simplest theatre devices. They tell stories about the misery of one’s own existence and the imponderability of life, and, quite incidentally, about the emotional state of a nation. It is alarmingly sad, but also exuberantly hilarious at times.